


Dance with me

by skinsuit



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinsuit/pseuds/skinsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peri and The Doctor go to a club, and Peri ends up dancing with a stranger or is he as strange as he seems?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance with me

Peri was bored. The Doctor had talked up this famous club and all the interesting people they would meet there. It turned out the interesting people were just scientist friends of his. Peri couldn’t even begin to join the conversation, which she couldn’t understand in the first place. The Doctor was gesticulating wildly and shouting polysyllabic words. Peri quietly got up from the table and went to the crowded bar. She caught the bartender’s attention easily.

“Can I have a Cosmopolitan?” she asked.

“Peri!” a man’s voice from behind her called.

“Yes?” She turned around to see a tall, thin, pale man with brown hair overhanging his brow. He was wearing a brown pinstriped suit. And he had the widest, silliest grin on his face.

“Peri, Ms. Perpugilliam Brown!” he exclaimed merrily.

She wondered who this grinning lunatic who knew her name was. “That’s my name,” she said nervously.

He grabbed her and gave her a fierce hug. “It’s so good to see you again!”

She pushed him away. "Hold on! Who are you? I don’t even know you,” she said.

"Yes, you do! I’m the Doctor,” he said.

“But he’s sitting right over there,” she said.

“Yes, I am. And I’m here too. He's me, about… four regenerations ago. What do you think?” he said, turning around.

She laughed and smiled. “Well, you're thinner and bouncier, and your taste in clothes has sure improved.”

“Bouncy, I like that,” he said. The band started playing a new song. “You want to dance?”

“But you don’t dance,” Peri said.

“Yes, I do.” He held out his hand. “C’mon!”

She took his hand. It was cold, just like her Doctor’s hand and that of the Doctor before him. He pulled her onto the dance floor and whirled her about. She felt so fast, so light, so free as they spun around. Her Doctor certainly would never…. But someday… he would be this Doctor. The twinkle in his eye was awfully familiar. They shimmied, twisted, and be-bopped around the dance floor. And he grinned at her, that wide, boyish silly grin of his.  
Then there was a new slow song. All the couples on the dance floor moved closer. He put his arms around her waist, something her Doctor would never do, and drew her to him. She placed her hands on his shoulders and they moved step by step in awkward silence.

“Maybe we should get off the dance floor,” she whispered.

“Peri, my dear, dear, Peri,” he said. “This is exactly where I want us to be.”

And he almost sounded like her Doctor.

“What?” she said.

“I never told you then…” he began. “I was afraid you'd laugh. I was too full of bravado and bluster…”

“Never told me what?” she asked.

“How special you were to me,” he said.

“Me, special?” She shook her head.

“No, no… I mean it. I really, really cared for you, Peri, I just didn’t--" he said.

“You sure have a funny way of showing it,” Peri said.

“But I loved you. I regret that I never told you when I had the chance. That I never showed you how much I really cared,” he said.

“You loved me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, lowering his eyes. “I was in love you with you, head over heels. But I couldn't let you know… oh, no… Not then. I had to be big and shouty and important.”

She laughed and then looked over at the table where her Doctor was sitting with the scientists. He wasn’t talking any more. He was staring out at the dance floor, watching her.

“I think… I’d like to stop dancing with you,” she said. “It’s been nice meeting you… well, I know you, but I mean…”

He smiled. “It’s all right. Go on, Perpugilliam. Go to me.”

And she walked over to her Doctor. “So, Doctor,” she asked, “would you care to dance?”

“Me? Dance? Weren’t you just dancing with me a minute ago?” he said.

“How did you know?” she asked.

"I'm a Time Lord, Peri." He sighed.

"Still, want to dance, Doctor?" she asked.

"All right, if you want." He sighed again, rolling his eyes.

He took her hand and she led him onto the dance floor. She put her arms around him and he slowly put his arms around her. She smiled.

"What were you talking about with him?" he asked.

"Nothing important," she said, and kissed him once lightly on the lips.


End file.
